So what is Hour 5 about? Two things primarily: time (periods of the day) and dates, and then expressing oneself in the present tense. A lot of this has already been addressed amply through the numerous examples in Essential French (EF), but ATYF handles the material in a more descriptive way that does add nuance and detail.

Morning, Day and Night
The words for morning, day and night have masculine and feminine counterparts, that follow a consistent expressive pattern:

morning

le matin

la matinée

all morning (long)
an afternoon theater performance

dayfrequently combined with numbers as in 2 jours, 3 jours…

le jour

la journée

all day (long)rarely connected with numbers

evening

le soir

la soirée

all evening (long)
a party (usually in the evening)

In order to say, “in the morning”, “in the day” or “in the evening”, you do not use a preposition in French. The definite article alone expresses this: le soir, “in the evening”. However, dans la matinée “in the course of the morning” stands in contrast to this, requiring the preposition dans.

Other useful expressions for time include the following:

hier
yesterday

aujourd’hui
today

demain
tomorrow

hier (au) matin
yesterday morning

matin
morning

demain (au) matin
tomorrow morning

hier (au) soir
yesterday evening

soir
evening

demain (au) soir
tomorrow evening

l’après-midi
the afternoon

le lendemain
the next day

lundi matin
Monday morning

Avant-hier
or le jour d’avant heir
the day before yesterday

aujourd’hui
today

Après-demain
or le jour après demain
the day after tomorrow

Les Jours de la Semaine: The Days of the Week
The days of the week are not capitalized in French as they are in English. Also quite different, the week typically starts on Monday. The weekend is either le week-end or la fin de la semaine. The days are:

lundi, Monday

mardi, Tuesday

mercredi, Wednesday

jeudi, Thursday

vendredi, Friday

samedi, Saturday

dimanche, Sunday

Also note the difference made by these two expressions. The only change is the article, but the force of the statement is quite different:

Je travaille lundi. I work Monday.

Je travaille le lundi. I work Mondays.

Months and Seasons
Here they are, also not capitalized in French as they are in English:

janvier January

février February

mars March (the s is pronounced as an s!)

avril April

mai May

juin June

juillet July

août August (pronounced as an oot)

septembre September

octobre October

novembre November

décembre December

le printemps spring

au printemps in the spring

l’été summer

en été in the summer

l’automne fall

en automne in the fall

l’hiver winter

en hiver in the winter

There is/are…
There are a couple ways of saying this, and they vary by what you are trying to actually say. If you intend to say, “Look [over there], there is/are….!”, use Voilà… If the object you are pointing out is really close by though (physically or figuratively), use Voici… instead. But if you are just trying to state the presence of something, and not pointing it out, then the proper idiom is il y a _____, which does not change for number or gender, being an impersonal expression. We have already covered this last expression in depth, but I thought it worth stressing the differences between these three expressions.

Sentence Structure
The typical structure of a declarative sentence is subject, verb, then direct object (or SVO), very similar to English. And like English, even though the verb form contains a marker for person, it is not typical to leave off the subject pronoun. A simple negative can be made by surrounding the verb with ne…pas, as we have seen on numerous occasions in EF.

The verb used has a lot to do with the structure of a sentence. One of the biggest features is transitivity. Transitive verbs (v.t.) govern direct objects. Intransitive (v.i.) verbs do not. And knowing whether a verb is transitive or intransitive is very important in French.

Est-ce que…, literally “it is that…”, or like English “Do? Does?”, before a normal declarative statement turns it into a question.

Subject and verb can be inverted to create a question.

This is rarely used in the first person

A -t- is added between the verb and subject pronoun in the third person if the verb doesn’t already possess the sound t or d at its end. This still gives me a moment pause – not sure if it is in agreement with what EF suggested.

A hyphen is used to connect the verb and subject.

Change in intonation can produce a question. Raising the tone at the end of a regular declarative sentence will make the statement a question.

Imperatives, or commands, can be made by removing the subject pronoun altogether. Imperative forms are only available for the tu, nous and vous form of verbs. In the tu form of -er verbs, the ending -s is dropped unless it is followed by a vowel:

Having read ahead a little, it looks like the imperative is formed from the present subjunctive for these irregulars – but this has not been said explicitly. The imperative of avoir is rare, that of être common, and vouloir with an infinitive means something like, “please…”.